Education: Year In Review 2003

The launch of a worldwide literacy campaign, an increase in the use of computers for education, funding problems, difficulties with achievement testing, disorder in schools, and court decisions affecting affirmative-action policies were some of the issues that educators encountered in 2003.

Primary and Secondary Education

During 2003 the United Nations launched a Literacy Decade (2003–2012) campaign with the motto “Literacy for freedom” in an effort to effect a 50% reduction in numbers by 2015 of the 860 million adult illiterates and the 100 million children who had no access to schooling. Though progress during the 1990s had raised the percentage of adults (age 15 and above) who could read and write at a modest level of competence, subsequent high birthrates, economic difficulties, and traditions of not sending girls to school in sub-Saharan Africa, parts of Asia, and the Arab states caused those regions to lag behind the rest of the world in educating their populations. In the early years of the 21st century, the adult literacy rate was 60% in sub-Saharan Africa, 67% in South and West Asia, 76% in Arab states, 95% in Latin America, and more than 99% in Europe and North America.

School enrollment in the United States set a record of 73 million students in preschools, elementary and secondary schools, colleges, and universities. Among pupils aged 5 through 17, 10% attended private schools and 850,000 were taught at home. Nearly 20% of the nation’s 53 million elementary- and high-school students spoke a language other than English at home. Of three- and four-year-olds, 52% went to preschools, compared with 21% in 1970.

Worldwide the educational role of computers continued to increase. In the U.S. 98% of schools were linked to the Internet, up from 50% in 1995. Four out of five students aged 6–17 used computers at school, with four individuals sharing one school computer. Two-thirds of the students had access to a computer at home. Children from traditionally disadvantaged populations were included in the growth, with 55% of low-income households having Internet access at home, at school, or at a library. Almost all public schools in Japan were connected to the Internet, and 58% had their own Web sites. In addition, 53% of teachers there employed educational software and the Internet in class, a 5% improvement over 2002. Classroom use of computers was greater in elementary-school classes (66%) than in junior high schools (46%) and senior high schools (38%). More than 99% of England’s primary and secondary schools enjoyed Internet access. The number of British students sharing a computer was reduced to 5.4 students in 2003 from 6.5 in 2002. Germany furnished one computer per 14 students, whereas Denmark provided a computer for every student.

During 2003 most U.S. school systems suffered from depressed economic conditions. States’ budget deficits of $80 billion forced officials to dismiss teachers, increase class sizes, close schools, and reduce services. By midyear, plans had been laid to eliminate thousands of school personnel—notably 20,000 teachers in California, 200 in Phoenix, Ariz., 178 in Seattle, Wash., and 600 staff members in Buffalo, N.Y. Sixteen schools were slated for closure in Detroit, nine in Birmingham, Ala., and seven in Oklahoma City, Okla. Services that suffered downgrading or elimination included libraries, interscholastic sports, free bus transportation for pupils, after-school tutoring, computer purchases, musical events, and school newspapers. Some relief from the economic crisis in New York was provided by voters who, in 94% of almost 700 districts, approved proposed school budgets that often required increased taxes. In Britain more than 3,000 teachers were scheduled to lose their jobs owing to a money shortage.

A financial crisis for public schools in the Philippines was blamed partly on the inability of middle-class parents to pay the rising fees charged by the country’s private schools, which resulted in an increased number of children transferring to public schools. Education officials estimated that the Philippines needed 21,000 additional classrooms and 10,000 more teachers to accommodate the new students.

The Australian government, on the other hand, increased its financial support of public schools by 8.3% above the 2002 allotment. China’s Ministry of Education authorized $121 million from the sale of treasury bonds to expand 500 senior high schools, mainly in the central and western regions of the nation. Each school would accommodate another 18 classes and about 900 extra students. Owing to the lack of classrooms, about half of the 16 million junior-high-school graduates had not been able to enter senior highs in recent years. The building program would enable 450,000 additional students to enroll.

In the United States nationwide achievement testing—an important part of Pres. George W. Bush’s ambitious education initiative—suffered a variety of difficulties. The most troublesome problem appeared in states that required students to pass standardized tests in reading and mathematics in order to receive high-school diplomas. Even students who had earned satisfactory marks in all of their classes could not graduate unless they also passed the exit tests. By 2003, 24 states had adopted a graduation-test plan or intended to do so. In Florida, Massachusetts, California, Nevada, New York, and North Carolina, the large numbers of students failing the exams during 2003 triggered public outcries that sent state legislators scurrying to repair their testing programs. Community activists in Florida threatened to boycott the state lottery and the tourist, citrus, and sugar industries if all 13,000 high-school seniors who had failed the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT) were denied diplomas. Subsequently, Florida lawmakers waived the testing requirement for students with disabilities whose individual education plans indicated that the FCAT did not accurately measure their abilities. Among the 4,178 Massachusetts high-school seniors who failed the graduation test, only 2,457 signed up for another chance to take the exam; when the retesting days arrived, just 698 showed up. The Massachusetts House of Representatives, in response to criticism, voted to allow students with “special needs” to earn diplomas even if they had not passed the exam, only to have Gov. Mitt Romney veto the measure. In New York officials cited flaws in the state’s math test as the reason that thousands of seniors who had failed the exam would be granted diplomas if they had earlier passed a Math-A course. Although California lawmakers had intended to introduce a graduation-test requirement in 2004, the state board of education postponed implementing the plan until 2006 after a study suggested that at least 20% of the 2004 seniors would fail. An even higher proportion of students with disabilities or limited English skills would not graduate if the deadline went unchanged.

A variety of nations reported persistent disorder in schools, including shootings, hazing, bullying, and the disruption of classes. A study of 1,000 British children revealed that half of primary pupils and a quarter of secondary students had been bullied during the term. In a nationwide survey of police officers who were assigned to schools in the U.S., more than 70% of the respondents reported a rise over the past five years in aggressive behaviour among elementary schoolchildren. More than 41% of the officers cited a decrease in funding for safety measures in their schools, and 87% said crimes at schools were underreported to the police. The Philadelphia school system’s newly imposed strict rules for reporting student misconduct resulted in a 41% increase in recorded assaults, weapons offenses, and other dangerous acts on and around school campuses. A total of 7,229 serious incidents were listed for the 2002–03 school year, including 976 weapons violations. An estimated 25 of Philadelphia’s 260-plus schools were expected to be placed on a list of “persistently dangerous” schools for the upcoming year. One eighth-grade Pennsylvania boy shot his school principal to death, then shot himself in the head. In New Orleans four armed boys killed a rival gang member in a crowded gymnasium and wounded three bystanders.

Authorities adopted a number of methods to stem school disorder, including expelling pupils, videotaping misconduct, teaching about the dangers of weapons, forcing bullies to pay fines, furnishing safe facilities for students, and rewarding good behaviour.

A landmark edict from the British House of Lords ruled that teachers were within their rights to refuse to teach violent pupils even if the children were legally entitled to be in school. In England over the most recent two-year period, permanent exclusions from school increased 4% from 9,135 to 9,540. Expulsions of children aged 5 to 11 increased from 1,436 to 1,450, while the figures for secondary schools rose to 7,740 from 7,305. Boys accounted for more than 80% of the expulsions.

A high-school-girls’ off-campus touch-football game in Northbrook, Ill., deteriorated into a videotaped hazing melee in which members of one team kicked and punched their opponents before dousing them with paint and excrement. Many were injured; five required hospitalization. Officials responded by suspending 32 students from school.

In an effort to provide parents with visual proof of their children’s misbehaviour, the Manchester, Eng., City Council authorized the installation of inconspicuous video cameras in classrooms. The Biloxi, Miss., school system became the first in the U.S. to install Internet-wired video cameras in hallways and classrooms. Less expensive than closed-circuit video cameras that record images on tape, the Biloxi equipment captured classroom scenes on a computer’s hard disc. Anyone with proper Internet access could then witness the activities in any classroom.

The U.S. government allocated nearly $400 million to 97 communities to strengthen school safety and to improve mental health services for children with emotional and behavioral disorders who were at risk of becoming violent. After several Canadian youths died or committed suicide as the result of bullying by their peers, Edmonton, Ont., passed a law making bullying illegal and subjecting tormentors to a fine of at least $250. The New York City Department of Education, in an effort to relieve gay and lesbian students of ridicule by classmates, financed a special public school for homosexual, bisexual, and transgender youths; 100 students attended the new school in 2003, and enrollment was expected to grow to 170 in 2004.

Following a series of school shootings in South Africa, the organization Gun Free South Africa launched a campaign to make the nation’s schools weapon-free zones. The campaign included showing the 2002 movie Bowling for Columbine, a Michael Moore (see Biographies) film based on a shooting incident at a high school in the United States. Ghana’s nongovernmental Centre for Moral Education established a program to identify “morally upright and disciplined pupils” and reward them with the kinds of incentives typically provided for academic excellence—money, scholarships, and public recognition.

Schooling was disrupted in several nations by disasters. An outbreak of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) forced schools to shut down for several weeks in Beijing, Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, and Toronto. (SeeHealth:Special Report.) During the three-week closure in Hong Kong, more than 8,000 students continued their lessons from their home computers via the Internet, taking notes and speaking with their teachers and classmates by such means as Web cameras, audio-video phones, conferencing software, instant-messaging tools, and multimedia animation programs.

Successful efforts to rebuild Afghanistan’s education system enabled six million children to attend school in 2003, nearly double the number of 2002. The publication of 5.8 million new textbooks helped fill the need for school supplies, as did 500,000 new desks that supplemented the 1.5 million desks purchased in 2002. There continued to be a serious shortage of qualified teachers, however, partly as the result of low pay—$35 to $45 a month. Because schooling was so badly disrupted during the 23 years of warfare prior to the defeat of the Taliban government in 2001, the number of illiterate youths and young adults in Afghanistan was believed to be in the millions. Although some 12,000 young people attended special courses in 2003, most of the unschooled were not enrolled in any program.

The Malaysian government stopped funding the nation’s 206 public religious schools (Sekolah Agama Rakyat) in the belief that many of them fomented hatred and religious extremism. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Mahathir bin Mohamad stated that SAR students who transferred to national schools would receive a more-rounded education in the company of students of other races and religions. Not all of the 125,000 SAR students abandoned the religious schools after government funds were withheld, however. Some overzealous SAR teachers warned their charges that damnation awaited them if they moved to a national school.

In Europe the debate continued over the roles of the religious and the secular. French Pres. Jacques Chirac backed legislation that would prevent schoolchildren from wearing overt religious symbols, including Muslim head scarves, large crosses, or Jewish yarmulkes. In Spain, however, the administration of Prime Minister José María Aznar passed a law that required all students each year to attend a class on Roman Catholic dogma or one on world religions.

Click anywhere inside the article to add text or insert superscripts, subscripts, and special characters.
You can also highlight a section and use the tools in this bar to modify existing content:

Add links to related Britannica articles!
You can double-click any word or highlight a word or phrase in the text below and then select an article from the search box.
Or, simply highlight a word or phrase in the article, then enter the article name or term you'd like to link to in the search box below, and select from the list of results.

Note: we do not allow links to external resources in editor.
Please click the Web sites link for this article to add citations for
external Web sites.